“One thing I’m pretty certain of, is you’ll witness some more awful things before we’re out of the other side of this place. But I’ve done this enough times to be confident we can get through. You need to decide what you want to do.”
As one, the group turned to look at William. Even Olga.
Chapter 7
If they wanted to get south of the wall, the easiest and most efficient way would be to pass through the city. William had seen one of the walled communities bordering the ruins, and if Gracie had told them the truth, another one sat on the other side. Surely, using the abandoned buildings as cover had to be their best chance of getting through unnoticed. They’d stand out from a mile away if they tried to travel across open land. When William put that to the group, none of them objected.
They gave Hawk the time he needed to recover from Olga’s punch and to then apologise for being a moron. While they waited in the train station’s darkness, the soldier’s screams ended, and the chains rattled from where they untied him and took his body away.
The moon created more shadows than light. Danger could have been hiding in the darkness, but they couldn’t let unseen enemies halt their progress. They stepped from the station onto a wide road, the asphalt streaked with cracks packed with dense clumps of grass.
They were all on a strict order to only talk when essential. Questioning Gracie’s choices didn’t count as essential. Not that it stopped Olga trying every time they slowed down.
William ran directly behind Gracie and became a shield between her and the others. He matched her pace, locking into a steady rhythm as he followed her through another window of an old building. Glass crunched and popped beneath their steps. Wrecks of tables and chairs filled the space like in the café earlier. A large metal block sat over to their right, its flat top stained black and covered in dirt.
“This used to be a restaurant,” Gracie said. “They cooked food on that thing over there.”
William nodded. “I’m sure it was much easier than building a fire.” He checked behind. The others remained close.
Gracie halted immediately after jumping through another window. William hopped through and landed beside her. Another wide road. The city appeared to conform to a grid layout. Unlike the ruins outside Edin, where the streets were all different shapes and sizes, made from different materials from concrete to large stones, this city had the appearance of one designed and built from scratch rather than added to over time.
They were now just twenty feet from the first of the three tall towers. To look up them hurt the base of William’s neck, and his head spun.
“No fucking way,” Olga said.
Gracie shot her a hard glare and pressed her finger to her lips. How many times did she have to tell her?
But it didn’t silence the small firecracker. Instead, she attempted a whisper. “No way am I going in there. I’m not climbing to the top of those towers. You’re showing off now.” Her face glistened with sweat, and she fought to regulate her breathing as if battling against a rising panic attack. She gulped and shook her head. “No way.”
And she didn’t have to. But Gracie shrugged and darted across the road in the tower’s direction. Olga could find her own way.
The group looked to William again. Who did he back? He had no reason to doubt Gracie. He looked both ways and charged across the road to the first tower’s entrance.
Like almost every other building in the city, the large rotating doors lacked the glass they would have once had. And a good job, because the top and bottom wore a rash of rust that suggested they wouldn’t turn no matter how hard they shoved. William stepped through the metalwork into the vast foyer, the remains of a wooden desk directly in front of them. The black tiled floor leeched what little light made it inside. Although, the two entrances in the far wall remained visible. One, a single doorway, minus the door that would have once filled it. The other, closed metal double doors. They were covered in rust and clearly hadn’t been opened in years.
The rest followed William in, Olga taking up the rear.
“You ready?” Gracie said.
William shrugged and Olga said, “No.”
Gracie set off again, leading them through the doorway with the missing door to a dark stairwell. Sets of ten to fifteen stairs before they turned one hundred and eighty degrees and ran up another flight. The shadows made it impossible to see all the way to the top. William’s words ran ahead of him, those too dying in the gloom. “How high are we going?”
“We’re going to the top.”
“You’re taking the piss,” Olga said.
“I wish I were.” Again, Gracie gave them no time to argue.
They moved quickly, their collective steps rolling like thunder. William’s head spun every time he turned to climb the next flight. His legs on fire, his lungs working at full capacity. He caught a foot several times where he’d not lifted his leg high enough. He carried Jezebel with both hands.
Just before William could ask Gracie to stop, she paused, a window letting in enough light to reveal a large number ten on the wall.
William rested Jezebel on his knees, leaned over the handle, and pulled in deep breaths. “Can—” he paused for breath “—we—” breathe “—slow the—” breathe “—pace a little?”
Gracie hadn’t even broken a sweat. Dianna hadn’t either. Who knew? Gracie’s features played out as if she had difficulty finding sympathy for his struggle, but she finally shrugged and said, “Okay, let’s walk for a while.”
At the eleventh floor, William halted again. A long corridor stretched away from them. It had doors lining either side. “What did this place used to be?”
“It was both a hotel and office space.”
“What are they?” Matilda said.
“A hotel is where people came to stay for a few nights and paid for the privilege. An office is a place where businesses operated.”
“Like insurance?” Artan said with a smile.
“Exactly. And redundant now.”
Artan’s face fell slack. “Cyrus would have loved to see this place.”
Olga snorted a laugh. “And he would have crapped his pants to be in here.”
After a few seconds, Artan smiled and nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
They stopped next when they reached the twentieth floor. Another window without a pane. The wind howled, stinging William’s eyes when he looked out over the city. They were higher than most of the surrounding buildings. “Are we at the halfway point yet?”
“We’re past halfway,” Gracie said.
William’s clothes itched from where they clung to his sweating body. “I’ve never been this far from the ground in my life.”
Gracie laughed. “Wait ’til you get to the top.”
At the twenty-first floor, William halted again, the others stopping behind him.
Gracie halted a few steps later, threw her arms out to the sides, and came back down to him. “What is it?”
William pointed through a doorway. A corridor like they’d seen on many other floors, but this one had the remains of a fire in it. He might have missed it completely were it not for the moonlight catching the streaks of white where bones lay amongst the charred lumps. Bones that could have been human.
“Scavengers?” Hawk said, stepping towards the corridor. Olga grabbed him and tugged him back.
Gracie nodded. “I’d say so. Although, they look to be long—”
A gust of wind hit William in the back and shot past him down the corridor. It blew the ash away from the top of the fire. The embers beneath glowed red.
“You were saying?” Olga said. She kept a hold of Max.
Lowering her voice to a whisper, Gracie hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Come on, let’s keep moving.”
They broke into a jog again, their steps louder with their haste.
Maybe William imagined it, but every time they passed a new floor, he glanced in and glimpsed someone there. A silhouette or two
in the shadows. But on every second check, they’d gone. Tricks of the light? Ghosts? Scavengers?
Floor twenty-eight.
Floor twenty-nine.
They were just a few floors from the top. They followed Gracie past the large number thirty and up the next flight of stairs leading to a metal door. The old hinges groaned as she forced it wide.
William froze again, the others slamming into him. Had he just seen that? Several floors below, the dirty face of a scavenger peering up at them.
“Come on!” Matilda shoved William.
He must have imagined it. They were looking to him for guidance. The last thing he should do was panic about invisible enemies. He could tell them about it when they were well away from here.
The second William stepped out onto the roof, the wind shoved him back a pace. It burned his eyes and stung his skin. He dipped his head into the strong gales and moved aside to let the others through, each of them leaning forwards into the force of nature. All of them walked on weary legs. All of them save Gracie and Dianna.
“Wow,” William said. “I know I said it earlier, but I’ve never been this high up.” The trio of towers had been built close to one another. The drop to the ground made William’s head spin. He stepped back, his heart in his throat.
Gracie placed a hand on the back of William’s arm. “Give it a moment. You’ll get used to it.”
Several rounds of deep breaths, William returned to the edge. Still woozy, but his dizziness had left him. The city stretched away from them in every direction. The tops of the buildings were lit by the moon. There were older structures with spires that pointed at the sky. A vast metal arena, a webbing of rusting steel over its open roof. Seats surrounded a rectangular patch of mud. What had it once been? Did they use it for trials like with the national service area?
Ascetically ruined, but structurally sound, the buildings might have looked a mess, but they were unlike anything William had seen before. It was like witnessing the future. A post-future. What if they rediscovered the secrets that had died with this society? What could they do with them now? The dark night prevented him from seeing to the edge of the city, let alone beyond it. How close were they to the wall? Did they have communities on either side of them like Gracie had said? If only he could come back here during the day.
“Now, while I think this is a wonderful trick,” Olga said, stepping back from the building’s edge, “has it really been necessary for us to come up this high?”
“Like when we went through the tunnel,” Gracie said, “the less time we spend on the city’s streets, the better.” She pointed at a pile of thick hollow poles. They were made from brushed steel. Unlike the rest of the metal William had seen in this place, these were rust-free. They’d seen a lot of use. Several slipped and clanged when Gracie pulled one from the stack. A small lip about a foot tall ran around the edge of the roof. It had grooves cut into it every few feet. Gracie laid one of the poles in one of the grooves and leaned it across the gap between the two buildings.
William’s stomach flipped with how close she stood to the edge. One powerful gust could end her. Especially with the weight of the pole tipping her balance.
“No way.” Artan this time. He shook his head and repeated, “No way am I climbing across that gap. No.”
“Come on, Gracie.” The aggression had left Olga’s voice. “Surely there’s no need for this?”
But Gracie went back for the next pole. Before she lifted it, the metal door leading from the stairs flung wide with a crack!
A short woman with wild and greasy black hair. The face that had stared up at William. She charged at them. Her toothless mouth stretched wide in a scream. She wielded a metal bar and ran straight at Olga.
Hawk released a yell to rival the woman’s. His spear in one hand, his knife raised, he charged at her. But he tripped, fell hard, landed on his shoulder, and cleared Olga’s legs from beneath her.
Gracie intercepted the scavenger before she reached the fallen pair. She grabbed her ragged shirt and turned away from her, using the woman’s momentum to launch her over her shoulder. The woman’s scream changed in pitch as she flew in an arc over the side of the building.
William led the charge to the edge, the others joining him. He dropped to his knees and held onto the building’s raised brickwork lip. It stopped his head spinning. The scavenger’s arms and legs flailed as she fell.
She hit the ground with a loud kaboom! The explosion shook the building, and a ball of fire engulfed the dead woman. It swirled on the ground and turned into a sphere of acrid smoke that rose and slammed into William’s face.
“Those,” Gracie said, “are landmines. They are lots of them in this part of the city. You can see many of them from where the road’s been torn to shreds.”
A jagged line ran through the churned road between the two towers like an angry scar.
“But some of them are hidden. We don’t know how the mines got there, but the more time you spend on the ground, the more likely you are to step on one. Especially in the dark. Maybe we’re being overcautious using the roofs of these buildings, but it’s the safest route we’ve found.” She turned to Olga. “You think we enjoy climbing this tower?” A shake of her head. “Not at all, but it is what it is. We want to be safe, and this is the only way to cross from one building to the next.”
Gracie laid three more poles across the gap before she tossed her spear to the roof of the next building, gripped onto one of the poles, and let herself swing around so she hung beneath it.
William’s stomach lurched and the back of his knees tingled.
Her legs crossed at the ankles, Gracie shimmied over, apparently impervious to the effects of being so high. At the other side, she reached back and pulled herself onto the roof of the building opposite.
Fortunately, Matilda made a decision before William had to. She yanked Jezebel from his grip and threw it after Gracie. It landed on the flat roof on the other side. She followed Gracie’s lead, shimmying across the pole. Like Gracie, she moved as if she’d done it a thousand times.
Now William needed to find the motivation to follow her.
Chapter 8
The cold pole and strong winds turned William’s hands numb. His knuckles ached from his tight grip, and the wind slammed into him as he hung between the second and third tower. But he kept going. An inch at a time. He’d already crossed from the first to the second tower, so he could do it again. Besides, all the others had crossed as if they’d done it a thousand times, even Dianna, who’d been the meekest of the group since they’d liberated her from the asylum. Only Matilda had waited for him on the second building, offering him a back slap of encouragement for his first tentative crossing. She then scooted over to the final roof.
William looked down and damn near lost his stomach. His head spun. His grip weakened. He clung tighter to the frigid pole. Any tighter and he’d dislocate his knuckles. They’d break before the thick steel yielded, hollow or not.
The moon shone a spotlight on him. It made him easy to see from the dark windows running down the sides of the tower blocks. The wind played the tall buildings. Were there people inside waiting to spring an attack? Scavengers? Diseased? Visible for everyone to see, he gave them every opportunity with how long this crossing had already taken. He nodded to himself and grunted through gritted teeth. “Come on, William. You can do it!”
About halfway between the towers, his jaw tight as if the strength of his clench could somehow allay the biting cold in the cutting wind. He looked down again. The line of windows showed him the way to the ground. He’d travel several hundred feet in a matter of seconds. Mines or not, the impact would shatter every bone in his body.
“William, sweetie.” Matilda leaned from the edge of the tower. “Look at me.” She smiled, but her eyes pinched at the sides. “You’ve got this, okay?”
Trembling, William nodded. He had this. He could do it.
William yelled when the metal pole slipped against th
e bricks. He clung to the bar, hugging it, the cold steel against his chest. But the movement hadn’t come from him. Gracie pulled one of the spare poles free, dragging it across to the third tower’s roof before laying it flat and moving on to the next one. It took her a few seconds to look at William. She clapped a hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I should have warned you.”
“You reckon?”
“We have to pull the poles back across. As long as we take them all the way with us, there’s always some on either side. Sorry.”
Sweat rose on William’s brow and instantly turned cold in the biting wind. One hand over the other. An inch at a time. Like he’d done when crossing from the first to the second tower. He’d done it before. He’d do it again.
“That’s it, William.” Matilda remained at the edge of the roof. Just a few feet away. “You’re nearly there. Keep going.”
The last two feet were the hardest. The cold locked his hands into claws. Much more time on this bar and his grip would fail him. His muscles burned with fatigue, and he trembled. An inch at a time.
William threw his right hand back, slamming his knuckles against the edge of the roof. The salt in his sweating skin burned the fresh graze. A countdown in his head. Three, two, one. He threw his right hand back again. This time he caught the inside edge of the lip of brickwork around the top of the tower. He pulled himself towards the building.
Hands reached over and grabbed his clothes. Matilda and Gracie, they pulled him towards the roof, his shoulder blades scraping over the rough bricks. He fell over the other side of the lip, landing cheek first on the roof’s gravelled surface.
Gasping and lying on his back, William closed his eyes. When he opened them, Matilda looked down on him with a wide grin. “Well done! You did it.”
“Will you ever let me forget about this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will this be like the time in Edin when I tried to make a jump and fell?”
Matilda laughed. “You’re still bitter about that?” She leaned in and kissed him. “Well done. I’m proud of you.”
Beyond These Walls | Book 8 | Between Fury & Fear Page 5